Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He moonlights as a poet. Dilantha wrote his first poem at the ripe age of 32 and now has more than 1700 poems on his blog. His poems have been accepted/published in Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry and Ravens Perch, among others. He was also awarded the prize for "The emerging writer of the year - 2016" in the Godage National Literary Awards, Sri Lanka for his first collection of poems (Kite Dreams – A Sarasavi Publication), while being shortlisted for the poetry prize. Dilantha is a dual citizen of Sri Lanka and Australia, and shares his experiences from two different cultures. He blogs at - https://meandererworld. wordpress.com/

Tag: Arabica

As Arabica, Liberica and Robusta
They are found. The goats munched their beans in Ethiopia
And the herders made a beverage out of it.
At the onset of day, when dawn makes an entrance
The heart leaps out of bed for the soothing
Richness and aroma of blend 43
To make the heart more rhythmic and the gait less cumbersome
You can say that’s when the eyeballs
Stick out and the rods and cones
See a ray of light sneaking through
The closed curtain

And through a pacing heart
And an unsteady hand, the winking eye
Stays awake to a dose of an alkaloid
And you wonder why the Goats
Go “Baaaaaaa” with so much ease….
It is a drug, looking a lot like cocaine
In its purified form, giving a kick
To the dormant senses, even plunging
You to the addicted galaxies
Of paltry idiosyncrasies – the pencil music
Or the scribblings of little poems
Or another mug of Arabica

And all the while, you drink it
Knowing it is when the madman creeps out
Of your sane personality, when the fidgeting
Fingers makes little punch work
On a computer, and you find – ta da –
Something that your boss loves on the screen
And through the innervation of little networks
Pulled by her power, you find
One jet black consistency that grown men and women
Decant from a machine, making the hard grind
A stroll in the park.

And a mug of coffee – what a barista
From Starbucks or Coffeebean brought,
Or what mum has made you
Before school -, is when you learn to do the Viennese waltz
With your fingers, to make little patterns
Into meaningful words and illustrations that
Multiply with great ease.

And this beverage makes
Everything dance at a higher beat
Than they normally would. And how
Beautiful is when all those anatomical parts
That sculpts the Homo sapiens
– Muscle, neuron and even glands –
Are led on the dance floor
To the swing and step, of a little bean
In a black tuxedo, that gifts to man
The tempo of kinesis
And the romance of the road.